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The futurist : the life and films of James Cameron

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By Tom Shone

• Jan. 14, 2010

As a boy in Chippawa, Ontario, James Cameron once sent some mice over the edge of Niagara Falls in a small submersible made from old mayonnaise jars, an Erector Set and a paint bucket. Another time, he made a hot-air balloon out of a dry-cleaning bag and some candles, floating it down the street until someone reported it as a U.F.O. and called the Fire Department. Together with the young Steven Spielberg’s experiments in civic alarum-raising — locking himself in the bathroom until the Phoenix Fire Department was summoned — Cameron’s excursions suggest two interlocking propositions: (1) If you want to know who is going to grow up to be a box-office titan, check out the rec­ords of your local Fire Department. And (2) nobody should be surprised if Balloon Boy turns into the proud auteur behind “Terminator Resurrection: This Time With Feeling.”

As Cameron’s latest art-house offering appears in a few select cinemas, Rebecca Keegan’s biography, “The Futurist,” arrives to shine a spotlight on this most shy and retiring of filmmaking violets. I’m only half-joking. The Cameron who emerges here is a pensive soul, racked by the thought of nuclear apocalypse after he reads a pamphlet on fallout shelters at age 8 — “a life-changing epiphany,” according to Keegan, leading to a lifetime of “daydreaming about Armageddon.” I’m sorry, but this is James Cameron we’re talking about? Mr. I Eat Pressure for Breakfast? The guy who detonated a small thermonuclear device just to backlight Arnold Schwarzenegger while he puckered up for a kiss with Jamie Lee Curtis? To this day, people watching that scene are unsure whether to shield their eyes, crouch under their seats or head for the basement.

To be fair, Cameron’s films have long attempted to balance airy calls for world peace with a fierce desire to see Harrier jump jets pass horizontally through tall buildings, but it’s disquieting to see that mixture served up so credulously here. Keegan visited Cameron on the set of “Ava­tar” for Time magazine in 2008 and decided to turn her article into a book, which is less a biography proper than a set visit by someone who got carried away with access to the great and mighty Oz: “Cameron’s brain is formidable, fascinating and equally developed on both sides.” That’s nice to know. Fans will already be familiar with the unusual molecular makeup of the Jim Cameron childhood: three parts science geek to one part rebel, he aced physics and was pounded at school. After the family moved to California, he got a job driving the hot-lunch truck for the Brea Olinda Unified School District and began scribbling plot ideas about blue people and bioluminescent planets while boning up on matte processes at the University of Southern California library. Then, in 1977, he saw “Star Wars” and emerged seething: somebody had made his movie. “That’s when I got busy,” he said.

Getting a job at Roger Corman’s studio, he sculptured spaceships for low-fi “Star Wars” rip-offs and landed his first directing gig on “Piranha II: The Spawning”; after he was fired, he found himself in a hotel room with a fever and dreamed of a steel skeleton clawing its way through a blistering inferno, thus making “The Terminator” the most innovative alternative to filing for unemployment benefits yet devised. That genesis is the stuff of myth; far more revealing is the three-month period Cameron spent in 1983 writing the scripts for “The Terminator,” “Rambo” and “Aliens,” figuring out how many pages per hour he had to write, then cranking them out to an accompaniment of “Mars, the Bringer of War” from “The Planets.” Hasta la vista, Holst!

Genuine revolutions come in two installments, with first the boy wonders — the Dantons, the Trotskys, the Spielbergs — to be followed, a few years later, by a much steelier strategist: a Napoleon, a Lenin, the man who would be king of the world. There are those who lament Cameron’s transformation from the scrappy filmmaker who made “The Terminator” for $6.4 million into the man who made “Titanic” for more than $200 million, but in truth he is one of the few directors who understand how to spend money, just as he is one of the few who know how to shoot action — a much smaller band than you’d think. Sigourney Weaver, an opponent of the N.R.A., was worried by all the chunky military hardware in “Aliens,” but remember what happens: the Marines descend to the mining colony on LV-426, bristling with guns and grenades, only to get their rear ends handed to them on a plate. Cameron had no need to direct “Rambo”: he’d already made his Vietnam movie.

Or think of the T-1000 in “Terminator 2,” mercury to Schwarzenegger’s might, and realize how powerfully it prefigured the enemy America would face on 9/11. Cameron has an instinctive understanding of asymmetry, in other words; it gives his combat scenes real heft and sinew. Would that the process by which a newly “mellow” Cameron coaxed virtual performances from his “Avatar” actors were anything that splendid: “To help them feel an explosion,” Keegan writes, “he boomed a noise over amplifiers, threw foam particles at them and whacked them with a padded jousting pole.” It’s enough to make you pine for the oxygenated screaming matches that characterized the shoots of “The Abyss” and “Titanic.” Cameron may have dragged filmmaking kicking and screaming into the 21st cen­tury, but he has helped deal an irrevocable blow to the art of film biography.

THE FUTURIST

The life and films of james cameron.

By Rebecca Keegan

273 pp. Crown Publishers. $24

Tom Shone is the author of “Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer.”

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The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron

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James Cameron

• Born August 16 , 1954 · Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada
• Birth name James Francis Cameron
• Height 6′ 2″ (1.88 m)
• James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954 in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. He moved to the United States in 1971. The son of an engineer, he majored in physics at California State University before switching to English, and eventually dropping out. He then drove a truck to support his screenwriting ambition. He landed his first professional film job as art director, miniature-set builder, and process-projection supervisor on Roger Corman 's Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and had his first experience as a director with a two week stint on Piranha II: The Spawning (1982) before being fired. He then wrote and directed The Terminator (1984) , a futuristic action-thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger , Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton . It was a low budget independent film, but Cameron's superb, dynamic direction made it a surprise mainstream success and it is now regarded as one of the most iconic pictures of the 1980s. After this came a string of successful, bigger budget science-fiction action films such as Aliens (1986) , The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) . In 1990, Cameron formed his own production company, Lightstorm Entertainment. In 1997, he wrote and directed Titanic (1997) , a romance epic about two young lovers from different social classes who meet on board the famous ship. The movie went on to break all box office records and earned eleven Academy Awards. It became the highest grossing movie of all time until 12 years later, Avatar (2009) , which invented and pioneered 3D film technology, and it went on to beat "Titanic", and became the first film to cost two billion dollars until 2019 when Marvel took the record. James Cameron is now one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood. He was formerly married to producer Gale Anne Hurd , who produced several of his films. In 2000, he married actress Suzy Amis , who appeared in Titanic, and they have three children. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Dorian House
• Spouses Suzy Amis (June 4, 2000 - present) (3 children) Linda Hamilton (July 26, 1997 - December 16, 1999) (divorced, 1 child) Kathryn Bigelow (August 17, 1989 - November 10, 1991) (divorced) Gale Anne Hurd (1985 - 1989) (divorced) Sharon Williams (February 14, 1978 - July 14, 1984) (divorced)
• Children Claire Cameron Elizabeth Rose Cameron Josephine Archer Cameron James Quinn Cameron Dalton Abbott
• Parents Shirley Lowe Phillip Cameron
• Relatives Mike Cameron (Sibling) John David Cameron (Sibling) Sibling (Sibling) Sibling (Sibling)
• Strong female characters
• Frequently casts Michael Biehn , Jenette Goldstein , Lance Henriksen , Bill Paxton and Arnold Schwarzenegger .
• His films frequently feature scenes filmed in deep blues
• Plots or events involving nuclear explosions or wars
• Likes to make nice/effective cuts
• After seeing Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) , Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry.
• While editing Titanic (1997) , Cameron had a razor blade taped to the side of the editing computer with the instructions written underneath: "Use only if film sucks!".
• A magazine article written about him in the 1980s described how he had three desks set up in his house. At one desk, he was writing the script to The Terminator (1984) , on another, he was finishing the script to Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and on the third, he was writing Aliens (1986) .
• Married one of his producers and two of his actresses.
• Jokingly refers to Titanic (1997) as his 190 Million Dollar "Chick Flick".
• People call me a perfectionist, but I'm not. I'm a rightist. I do something until it's right, and then I move on to the next thing.
• ...you can read all the books about filmmaking, all the articles in American Cinematographer and that sort of thing, but you have to really see how it works on a day-to-day basis, and how to pace your energy so that you can survive the film, which was a lesson that took me a long time to learn.
• I was petrified at the start of The Terminator (1984) . First of all, I was working with a star, at least I thought of him as a star at the time. Arnold came out of it even more a star.
• I went from driving a truck to becoming a movie director, with a little time working with Roger Corman in between. When I wrote The Terminator (1984) , I sold the rights at that time - that was my shot to get the film made. So I've never owned the rights in the time that the franchise has been developed. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to direct the second film and do so on my own creative terms, which was good. But that was in 1991 and I've felt like it was time to move on. The primary reason for making a third one was financial, and that didn't strike me as organic enough a reason to be making a film.
• Well, I see our potential destruction and the potential salvation as human beings coming from technology and how we use it, how we master it and how we prevent it from mastering us. Titanic (1997) was as much about that theme as the Terminator films, and in Aliens (1986) , it's the reliance on technology that defeats the marines, but it's technology being used properly that allows Sigourney's character to prevail at the end. And Titanic (1997) is all about technology, metaphorically as well as on a literal level, because the world was being transformed by the technology at that time. And people were rescued from the Titanic because of wireless technology, and because of the advances that had been made only in the year or so before the ship sank that allowed them to call for help when they were lost at sea in the middle of the North Atlantic. So I think it's an interesting theme, one that's always been fascinating for me...
• Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) - $92,000,000
• Avatar (2009) - $350,000,000
• Titanic (1997) - $115,000,000 ($600k for screenplay + $8m salary + backend participation)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - $6,000,000

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James Cameron

Who Is James Cameron?

James Cameron is a critically acclaimed film director known for some of the biggest box-office hits of all time. A science-fiction fan as a child, he went on to produce and direct films including The Terminator, Aliens and Avatar. He has received numerous Academy Awards and nominations for his often large-scale, expensive productions. His most noted work, 1997's Titanic, became the first film to earn more than $1 billion and landed 14 Academy Award nominations. Cameron took home three Oscars himself for the project: Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Picture.

Early Career

James Cameron was born on August 16, 1954, in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. A science-fiction fan as a child, he grew up to become one of the most visionary filmmakers in Hollywood. He initially pursued physics as a student at California State University, Fullerton, but he left to follow his cinematic dreams. Working as a truck driver, Cameron would pull off the road to work on screenplays.

In 1978, Cameron made his first film, a science-fiction short called Xenogenesis . The film helped him get a job with New World Pictures, a company run by famed B-movie director Roger Corman. At New World, Cameron worked in number of different roles, from art director on Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) to director on Piranha II: The Spawning (1981).

Major Films

With The Abyss (1989), however, Cameron experienced a number of disappointments. The shoot for the film was grueling. Much of it was filmed in a huge underwater set, which took its toll on the cast and crew. After its release, critics and moviegoers were not impressed with the story of scuba divers who encounter aliens while recovering a U.S. Navy submarine. However, the film's visual effects were stunning and earned an Academy Award.

Working with his third wife, Kathryn Bigelow , Cameron helped produce her 1991 action flick, Point Break (1991). The couple's two-year relationship ended around the same time. But Cameron returned to form that year with another box-office hit, Terminator 2: Judgment Day . The film earned more than $200 million and broke new ground with its impressive visual effects. Several years later he later he would marry one of the film's stars, Linda Hamilton.

Mixing marital issues and espionage, Cameron wrote and directed True Lies (1994), starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film made it to No. 1 at the box office, grossed more than $378 million worldwide and received an Oscar nod for its visual effects. Cameron then began a massive undertaking with his story Titanic , a movie about star-crossed lovers (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet ) trapped aboard the doomed Titanic ocean liner. To re-create one of the greatest disasters at sea in history, Cameron had a special studio built in Mexico, which featured a 17-million-gallon water tank and 775-foot replica of the Titanic .

The film cost nearly $200 million to make and was plagued with problems and delays, and many in the industry expected the film to tank just like its namesake. But Cameron proved the skeptics wrong. Opening in December 1997, the film received critical raves and strong ticket sales. Titanic eventually became the first film to earn more than $1 billion and landed 14 Academy Award nominations. For his work on the film, Cameron took home three Oscars—for Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Picture. In 1999, he divorced Linda Hamilton, and in 2000 he married actress Suzy Amis, who appeared in Titanic .

Continuing to be fascinated by the Titanic story, Cameron worked with his brother, Mike, to create new technology to film the undersea wreck of the infamous vessel. The result was the 3-D IMAX documentary Ghosts of the Abyss (2003). Two more documentaries followed in 2005: Volcanoes of the Deep and Aliens of the Deep .

In late 2017, Cameron revisited his famed project in the National Geographic special  Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron . The director revealed that he had made 33 dives to the wreckage site since the film was released, and said he was proud of how he was able to portray events in the film accurately, based on the knowledge he had at the time. He also admitted he got a few details wrong, like his depiction of the Marconi Wireless Room, where the captain instructed a wireless operator to make the distress call, and his interpretation of how the massive vessel sank.  

Again revolutionizing the world of special effects, Cameron returned to making feature films with 2009's Avatar . The film explores the conflict between American forces and the native population on another planet. In the film, Sam Worthington plays an American soldier who switches sides to help the Na'vi people, and falls in love with one of them (played by Zoe Saldana ).

Avatar quickly surpassed Titanic at the box office. It also earned Cameron a number of accolades, including Golden Globe wins for Best Director and Best Motion Picture - Drama. For the Academy Awards, Avatar was nominated in nine categories, including Best Picture and Best Director. However, Cameron lost out on some of the night's biggest prizes to his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, who won Best Director and Best Picture for The Hurt Locker .

The success of Avatar has led Cameron to develop multiple sequels to the box-office hit, with Avatar 2  slated for a 2020 release.

Deepsea Challenger

In 2013, Cameron traveled across the country with his Deepsea Challenger submarine. He had developed the vessel to travel to the deepest spot on the planet, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. Cameron made several stops on this journey to talk with young people about his amazing voyage into the Challenger Deep. "By telling the story to school kids in a hands-on way, we can inspire the next generation of engineers, scientists and explorers," he told the Cape Cod Today website. 

At the end of his historic trip, Cameron donated the Deepsea Challenger to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts. His journey was the subject of the 2014 documentary Deepsea Challenge 3D .

Solar Power

Mixing his love of science and technology with environmental consciousness, since the early 2010s Cameron has been working to make his production company green, installing a massive array of solar panels at his studios in Manhattan Beach, California. He hopes to make the Avatar sequels the first completely solar-powered films in history.

In 2015 Cameron revealed his further explorations in solar power, unveiling the prototypes for his Solar Sun Flowers. With a cluster of panels that sit atop a 30-foot "stem," surrounded by a ring of individual panels, the giant structures resemble their namesake and also mimic their behavior, turning to face the sun as it makes its daily arc, making it much more efficient than traditional, stationary panels. His first installation, next to a school in Malibu, California, fills the majority of the school's energy needs.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: James Cameron
• Birth Year: 1954
• Birth date: August 16, 1954
• Birth City: Kapuskasing
• Birth Country: Canada
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Oscar-winning director James Cameron is best known for the acclaimed box-office hits 'Aliens' (1986), 'Titanic' (1997) and 'Avatar' (2009).
• Astrological Sign: Leo
• California State University at Fullerton
• Occupations

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: James Cameron Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/movies-tv/james-cameron
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: August 15, 2019
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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James cameron, film futurist, just do it. just pick up a camera and start shooting something..

James Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, in Northern Ontario, Canada. Chafing at the strict discipline of his engineer father, Cameron became the master builder of his playmates, and enlisted his friends in elaborate construction projects, building go-carts, boats, rockets, catapults and miniature submersibles. His artist mother encouraged him to draw and paint. She helped arrange an exhibition of his work in a local gallery when he was still in his teens. Inspired by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, he began to experiment with 16-mm film, photographing model space ships he had built.

The Cameron family moved to Fullerton, California when he was 17 and Cameron enrolled at Fullerton College. Uncertain of his direction in life, torn between art and science, he dropped out of college, married a waitress and drove a truck for the local school district. After the film Star Wars reawakened his love of filmmaking, he quit his job and followed his own course of study in the library of the University of Southern California, reading up on the technology of special effects, optical printing, front and rear projection. He spent his meager savings on photographic equipment, building his own dolly track and experimenting with beam splitters in the living room of his small suburban house.

His wife and friends doubted his sanity, but he borrowed money from friends to make a short film he showed to low-budget maestro Roger Corman. Corman gave Cameron a chance to work as a model builder and production designer on his horror films. “Three weeks after I started I had my own department,” Cameron told Premiere magazine. “I was hiring people, and everybody else that worked there just hated me.”

After two years with Corman, Cameron got his first crack at directing, but it almost turned into his last. The producer of Piranha II: The Spawning fired him unceremoniously, claiming the footage Cameron had shot was unusable. Cameron followed the producer from Jamaica to Rome, let himself into the editing bay after it was closed, and re-cut sections of the film himself.

While in Rome he conceived the film that was to make his reputation, The Terminator . The script found takers at the major studios, but Cameron insisted on directing it himself, a deal-killer. He finally sold the rights to producer Gale Anne Hurd for one dollar, on condition that he direct it himself. Cameron’s unbridled enthusiasm won over Hemdale Films head John Daly and star Arnold Schwarzenegger. While waiting for Schwarzenegger to become available, Cameron wrote screenplays for Rambo: First Blood Part II and Aliens.

With the international success of The Terminator , Cameron won the director’s chair for Aliens and went on to direct The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and True Lies. Typecast as a director of high-testosterone action films, Cameron raised eyebrows by proposing Titanic as an intimate love story, albeit one with mind-boggling special effects. As production of the film ran months over schedule and millions of dollars over budget, industry pundits predicted an ignominious disaster. Cameron proved them wrong when Titanic broke box office records all over the world and swept the Academy Awards, winning an unprecedented 11 Oscars, including statuettes for Cameron as Best Director, and for the film as Best Picture.

Cameron’s reputation as a driven perfectionist has become part of Hollywood legend, but he takes it in stride as he calmly plans each film. In 2009, he unveiled his most ambitious project of all: Avatar , a science fiction epic, four years in the making. Based on a script Cameron first wrote in 1994, Avatar was the first big budget action film to be shot in 3D, using innovative camera technology Cameron developed himself. The revolutionary film earned over $1 billion in its first three weekends. Released simultaneously in IMAX, as well as 3D and conventional widescreen presentation, it immediately broke box office records in all formats. Within a few months of its release, Avatar ‘s box office receipts exceeded those of every other film ever made, including the previous box office champion, James Cameron’s Titanic .

The success of Cameron’s films has enabled him to pursue a wealth of other interests, including deep-sea exploration. An Explorer-in-Residence of the National Geographic Society (NGS), he helped found the Deepsea Challenge project, in partnership with the NGS. As part of the project, Cameron himself has undertaken a record-setting voyage to the deepest place on Earth.

Cameron made his journey in a custom-designed submarine, the Deepsea Challenger, described as a “vertical torpedo,” loaded with 3D cameras, powerful lights and a hydraulic robot arm. After testing the sub in the New Britain Trench, off Papua New Guinea, Cameron headed for the Mariana Trench, in the Western Pacific, east of the Mariana Islands, and south of Guam, where the Pacific tectonic plate subsides beneath the Mariana plate to its west. The Challenger Deep is the lowest point in the Trench, a narrow canyon, lying an estimated 6.78 miles (35,800 ft. or 10.91 kilometers) below sea level, although some data suggest it may go deeper still.

On March 25, 2012, Cameron descended, alone, traveling for over two hours from the dazzling light of the Equator to the chilling darkness of the Deep. Driving across the ocean floor for nearly three hours, Cameron explored a desolate landscape, almost as barren as the moon. In the New Britain Trench, he had encountered large amoeba-like jellyfish and anemones, but Cameron found little animal life in the Deep other than inch-long, shrimp-like amphipods. Although a failure of the hydraulic system prevented him from collecting samples and capturing as many images as he hoped on this initial voyage, the technology of the Challenger vehicle proved effective enough to enable return trips to the Deep. Future expeditions will collect soil samples whose microbial life could yield significant information on the origins of life on earth, and the possibility of life on other planets.

The year 2012 marked a milestone for Cameron the filmmaker as well, the long-awaited release of a 3D edition of his 1997 classic Titanic . Whatever future surprises James Cameron has up his sleeve, his exploits as filmmaker and explorer have already touched the lives of millions.

In January 2023, the long-awaited Avatar sequel, Avatar: The Way Of Water,  surpassed $2 billion on a budget of $350-460 million—making James Cameron the only director to have three films top $2 billion at the worldwide box office. Cameron’s other two films include the original Avatar (2009), which is number one of all time, with $2.923 billion on a $237 million budget, and Titanic (1997), with 2.195 billion on a budget of $200 million.

“Everyone around me had basically said, ‘You stink. You suck. You don’t know what you’re doing.'”

James Cameron was out of luck. After working for years as a model builder, production designer and second-unit director on low-budget horror films, he had been fired from his first job as director in a feature film. Stranded in Rome, swiping rolls off of room service carts, he had hit bottom. But he had an idea for another film; that idea became The Terminator. The script was easy to sell, but no studio wanted to take a chance on Cameron as director. His unbridled enthusiasm won over a few brave producers and star Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film was a runaway international hit and Cameron was on his way.

Aliens and True Lies consolidated Cameron’s reputation as a director of action films, but he wanted more. Cameron’s Titanic went on to become the first motion picture to gross more than $1 billion worldwide and also earned an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards, including Oscars for Director, Cinematography, Film Editing and Best Picture. It became the top-grossing motion picture of all time, until it was surpassed by Cameron’s Avatar , a breathtaking science fiction spectacle photographed in a revolutionary 3D process invented by the director himself. With these historic achievements in motion picture production, Cameron has become, in the words of Titanic ‘s Jack, “King of the World.”

A lot of people ask me, you know, “What’s the best advice to someone who wants to be a director?” And the answer I give is very simple: “Be a director.” Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. Everything after that you’re just negotiating your budget and your fee. So it’s a state of mind is really the point, once you commit yourself to do it.

Then the hard part starts. You have to foreswear all other paths, because you can’t keep a foot in cabinet-making and a foot in directing. You can’t keep one foot in another job. It’s a total and all-consuming thing. I suspect that’s true of many of the difficult and challenging things in the world, whether it’s research or whatever. Certainly the arts must be all-consuming, because you’re in competition with people who have made that decision, who have committed themselves 100 percent. You’re competing for resources. It’s a big coral reef. It’s a big food chain, and you’re competing for resources, and you’re competing against people who have made that commitment. If you don’t make the same commitment you’re not going to compete. It’s that simple.

How did you get your first opportunity to direct as a professional?

James Cameron: You never really “get” an opportunity. You take an opportunity. You know, in the filmmaking business no one ever gives you anything. Nobody ever taps you on the shoulder and says, “You know, I’ve really admired the way you talk and the way you draw, and I think you’d make a good director.” It doesn’t happen that way. You have to constantly be pulling on somebody’s sleeve saying, “Hey, I want to direct. I want to direct. I want to direct.” And you have to be willing to make sacrifices to do that. The mistake a lot of people, I think, make in Hollywood is that they think, “Well, I’ll get to the top of my field as a whatever, editor, production designer, writer, and then I’ll just move laterally into directing and I’ll be more respected and I’ll have more power.” It doesn’t work that way, because you drop right to the bottom of the pack as a director.

You have to work your way up again.

The way I did it was I came in through production design, which is good because you’re thinking visually, and you’re very aware of the director’s problems in trying to tell a story, and how the environment is, you know, a manifestation of the narrative in some way. And you know, I sort of proved myself as a production designer in the scrappy, stay-all-night-for-15-days-in-a-row kind of independent filmmaking that was done at Roger Corman’s place. This was in the early ’80s. And when they see that you have the creativity and the stamina, and that you basically understand filmmaking, it’s not a ridiculous leap in that environment to say, “I now want to try my hand. I want to direct.”

I just basically went up to Roger one day and said, “I’d like to direct second unit on this.” — the film that we were making at the time, which was a low budget science fiction horror picture. And he gave me a camera and a couple, two or three people, and we started a little second unit, and the second unit basically became this steam roller that wound up shooting about a third of the picture because they were falling way behind on first unit. So they’d give me the actors and say, “Well, do scene 28 and scene 42.” And all of a sudden I was working with actors, and that was terrifying because I hadn’t really thought that part through yet. You know, that in order to direct, you have to work with actors. It’s not just about sets and visual effects. So it was simultaneously a shock and a joyful discovery because I found that all actors really want is some sense of what a writer can bring to the moment, some sense of a narrative purpose. “What am I doing? What am I trying to do here? What’s the scene about?” And it’s really pretty much that simple. So that was the next epiphany if you will, which is: this part of it is fun too.

The part I didn’t expect to be fun, the part I didn’t expect to be good at, turned out to be in a way the most fascinating part. I wouldn’t say I was good at it right away.

It took me a long time to realize that you have to have a bit of an interlanguage with actors. You have to give them something that they can act with. You can’t tell them a lot of abstract information about how their character is going to pay off in this big narrative ellipse that happens in scene 89. That doesn’t help them. You know, they’re in a room. They have to create an emotional truth in a moment and, you know, they have to be able to create that very quickly. So they need real tangible stuff and that’s a learned art, I think. But coming from writing, and understanding what they’re feeling and what they’re thinking, what the character is feeling and thinking, and having thought about it a lot for months in advance is the way that I get enough respect from the actors that they trust what I’m saying. They trust what I’m giving them to do.

We’ve read that you were fired from your first film as a director. Is it true that you had to break into the editing room in order to realize your vision of what a film should be?

James Cameron: I suppose I should clarify that. Here was a critical juncture for me. I was hired to direct a film called Piranha II. I was hired by a very unscrupulous producer who worked out of Italy. He put me with an Italian crew who spoke no English, even though I was assured that they would all speak English. I actually had to learn some Italian very quickly, I’m talking about in two weeks. That’s all the prep time I had, because I was actually replacing someone else. I was put into an untenable situation and then fired a couple of weeks into the shoot, and the producer took over directing. It turns out that he had actually done that twice before on his two previous films. That was his modus operandi, in order to get the financing and then axe the director.

In the course of throwing me off the movie, he never showed me a foot of the film that I had shot. He held on to the dailies. We were shooting in Jamaica and the dailies would go to New York and be processed. He’d fly to New York and look at them and not send them back for me to see so I wasn’t even seeing my own film. He came in and said, “Your stuff doesn’t work, doesn’t cut together. It’s a pile of junk and you’re off the movie,” and then he took over the film. And I thought, “Maybe I’m just bad. Maybe I’m just not good.”

A couple of months later I went to Rome to find out what really happened, and he wouldn’t show me any of the film. I had been in Rome prepping the film for a couple of weeks before we went to Jamaica, and I remembered the code to get in. So I went in and ran the film for myself. It wasn’t that bad. All I wanted to know was one simple fact. Could I or could I not do this job? So I made a few changes before I flew back. I don’t know if the editor ever noticed that I actually fixed a couple of things, but I had to know whether what they had said was true.

Everyone around me had basically said, “You stink. You suck. You don’t know what you’re doing.” And I just — and I accepted it but then a little voice kept saying, “I don’t think so. I don’t think it can be that bad. I remember doing some pretty cool stuff with the actors in this moment and that moment.” And I looked at it and it was fine. So then I thought, “You know what, I actually can do this, and I just fell in with a pack of, you know, thieves and whackos here.” But I also realized that I was going to have to get busy and create my own thing, and that nobody would hire me after that experience. Nobody would hire me and just put me on a film. I’d have to create my own thing and hang on tenaciously to that in order to be able to direct again, and that’s why I wrote The Terminator. I had many, many people trying to buy that script, but I wouldn’t sell the script to them unless I went with it as the director. Of course that was a turn-off for almost everybody, but we did find one low-budget producer who was willing to make the film. That was John Daly at Hemdale, and that’s how I got my real start.

Clearly the road to success is not a straight line. It’s a winding road.

James Cameron: The road to success is like Harold and the Purple Crayon. You draw it for yourself. You have to imagine it first, and then you have to draw it, and then you have to walk it. Some people fall into good luck. Some people have it handed to them, but I think the great majority map it out for themselves.

What about the setbacks and the frustrations and the self-doubts? How do you deal with them?

James Cameron: When you’re working in a public art form like filmmaking you don’t really need self-doubt, because if it’s bad you’re going to hear exactly what’s wrong with it, and if it’s good you’ll hear what’s good about it. There are plenty of other people who will inform you, so self-doubt is not really necessary. You can set that one aside. Just drop it out the door. What you need is a lot of confidence to stand up to the slings and arrows, the barrage of negativity.

We exist in a peer environment and when we’re on the outside and we’re trying to get in, all our peers are like us and just a bunch of friends or people with similar interests. And none of them think you’re special. They think they’re special. So very few people will give you encouragement.

It’s like that old adage “It’s not enough to succeed, your friends must also fail.” You’re not going to get a lot of tremendous encouragement from your peer group and you can’t feed on that energy. You can actually support each other in very tangible ways, but that thing of “Dude, you’ve got it, you’re going all the way,” you’re not going to hear that. And you’re certainly going to face rejection after rejection. You’re going to knock on a lot of doors and you’re going to have to prove yourself.

I think you know that going in if you’re going into the filmmaking process. You have to go in with your eyes open. That’s what it’s going to be like.

There’s a tremendous temptation to do a work-around, or to do a moral or ethical work-around or a shortcut in a lot of situations, because it’s easier and it’s just — you’re so needy to get those little breaks and so on. And I think a lot of people get sort of ethically short-circuited at that stage and they never recover, you know? Because I think a lot of people would say, “Well, you know, I’ll do what I have to do now, but then later I’ll be good.” It doesn’t work that way. You are who you are. Fortunately, I’ve managed to get where I am without — the occasional burglary aside — without having to really hurt anybody or go against my word. I think ultimately your word becomes the most important thing that you have. It’s the most important currency that you have. Having a successful film is a very important currency as well, but in the long run your word is the most important thing, and if you say you’re going to do something, you have to do it. I think that’s what saw me through on Titanic. Titanic was in some ways the roughest project that I’ve ever been involved with. And what saw me through on that was that I had a relationship with the people who were quite rightly panicking, but they never completely panicked because they knew who I was, and we always treated each other with a kind of respect. I always did what I think was the right or ethical thing throughout that. Even though it was costing me millions of dollars personally right out of my pocket to do it, I felt I had to do it or they would never trust me again on another film, and I think that that’s ultimately the most important currency that you reap from any situation.

Were there any moments of panic for you during the making of Titanic?

James Cameron: Pretty much every day, but when you’re in a leadership position you can never ever manifest that. You can never manifest the panic that you feel inside.

Titanic was a situation where I felt, I think, pretty much like the officer felt on the bridge of the ship. I could see the iceberg coming far away, but as hard as I turned that wheel there was just too much mass, too much inertia, and there was nothing I could do, but I still had to play it through. There was no way to get off. And so then, you know, you’re in this kind of situation where you feel quite doomed, and yet you still have to play by your own ethical standards, you know, no matter where it takes you. And ultimately that was the salvation, because I think if I hadn’t done that they might have panicked. They might have pulled the plug. Things would have been very different, the whole thing might have crashed and burned but it didn’t, you know. We held on. We missed the iceberg by that much.

You first established a reputation as a master of special effects, and yet this blockbuster film, Titanic, you call a love story. It certainly has special effects, but that’s not how you talk about it.

James Cameron: Right. Titanic was conceived as a love story, and if I could have done it without one visual effect I would have been more than happy to do that. The fact is that the ship hasn’t existed since 1912, at least not at the surface, so we had to create it somehow. Obviously it was a big visual effect show when all was said and done, but that wasn’t my motivation to make the film. I don’t think that should ever be the motivation to make a film; it should be a means to an end. Certainly there’s an aspect of me that likes big challenges, whether it’s big physical construction or visual effects or whatever. I think that’s what I do best. Other people work at a much more intimate level; they do that solely and are better at that. I think that it was definitely a goal of Titanic to integrate a very personal, very emotional, and very intimate filmmaking style with spectacle. And try to make that not be kind of chocolate syrup on a cheeseburger, you know. Make it somehow work together. I think the spectacle got people’s attention, got them to the theaters, and then the emotional, cathartic experience of watching the film is what made the film work. I think the spectacle served it but was not the defining factor in its success. Once again I think it’s a question of balance. It’s sort of like looking at a painting and saying what part of the painting is the part that makes you like it. It’s all of it working together that makes you like the painting.

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James Cameron

About the author.

James Cameron (1914-2006) was an early civil rights pioneer, self-taught public historian, and author of dozens of essays on issues in American and African American history and contemporary life. Cameron’s most well known written work is his memoir, A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story, now in its 3rd edition. In 1988 he founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee awarded Cameron an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree in 1999 for a lifetime of work exhibiting materials of uncommon merit, moral and intellectual value to the city and state. As a 16-year-old in 1930, Cameron was lynched with two older teens on the courthouse lawn in in Marion, Indiana. An estimated ten to fifteen thousand men, women, and children gathered from around the state to witness the spectacle. A professional photographer snapped the world’s most recognized lynching picture, which shows a group of spectators, one of whom is pointing to the hanging bodies of Cameron’s two companions. Cameron, though badly beaten, survived the lynching. He was imprisoned for the next five years, during which he began writing A Time of Terror. Banished from Indiana during his parole, Cameron returned to live just thirty miles from the lynching tree to raise his family, establish a business, and organize for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). James, with his wife Virginia and his children, personally challenged segregation in their town’s movie theater by sitting in the Whites Only section–and won. In 1942, Indiana’s governor would appoint him Director of Civil Liberties, requiring him to travel the state investigating violations of the Public Accommodations Act. In 1952, as threats against his family mounted and organizing Indiana’s black community to resist became increasingly untenable, the Cameron family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Like many newly arrived black migrants, Cameron found well-paying factory jobs in that industrial city. He was able to send all five of his children to college, make research trips to the Library of Congress and National Archives, write, and build the collection of black history artifacts that would later become the museum. On a post-retirement trip in 1979, James and Virginia visited the Yad Vashem memorial museum in Jerusalem. Moved by the way that museum keeps the story of Jewish Holocaust victims alive before the world’s conscience, Cameron recognized a need to do the same for the descendants of enslaved Africans in America. He founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum to support African Americans in finding their identity and strength in “remembering their passages” and to help all of America’s peoples to forge “one single and sacred nationality.” Dr. Cameron and his lynching story have been featured in documentary films, in televised interviews with the likes of Larry King and Oprah, and in books by historians, journalists, and even psychologists. Despite the terrible trauma he endured in his formative years, he was a forgiving, peaceful, loving man with a playful and sometimes mischievous spirit.

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James Cameron

Article by William Beard , Wyndham Wise

Published Online January 27, 2010

Last Edited March 22, 2015

James Francis Cameron, film director, producer, editor, screenwriter, inventor (b at Kapuskasing, Ont 16 Aug 1954). James Cameron was raised in Niagara Falls, Ont, and as a teenager conceived a desire to direct films after watching Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). He began by experimenting with his father's Super 8-mm camera. After his family moved to California, Cameron studied physics and English at California State University, Fullerton, and pursued a master's in philosophy, but dropped out before completing his degree. As an adult he made a living driving a truck for the local school district, among a variety of other jobs, but remained fascinated by filmmaking, particularly its technique and special effects. He would go to the library at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) to study graduate papers on optical printing and creating special effects. George Lucas's Star Wars , released in 1977, convinced him to commit to a career in filmmaking.

James Cameron made his first 35-mm short, Xenogenesis , in 1978. In 1980 he got his start professionally at Roger Corman's New World Pictures as a model maker and art director on a low-budget sci-fi film, Battle Beyond the Stars . He served as a set dresser's assistant on Happy Birthday, Gemini (1980) and got a break when the director of Piranha II: The Spawning (1981) left during the production and Cameron was hired to finish the film. He served as production designer and second unit director on Galaxy of Terror (1981) and special effects assistant and matte artist on Escape from New York (1981).

During this time Cameron was working on the script for The Terminator and managed to attract interest from the studios, but his insistence on directing the film himself was a deal-breaker until he found a willing producer who agreed to back the film with Cameron directing. He had to give up ownership to do so and consequently, despite the tremendous continued worldwide success of The Terminator franchise, Cameron was only paid to direct the first one.

Made on a modest budget but with the star power of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role, The Terminator (1984) was a huge box office hit and launched Cameron's career as one of Hollywood's most durable writers and directors of big-budget, CGI-heavy blockbusters. After sharing the screenplay for Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) with Sylvester Stallone, he wrote and directed Aliens (1986; the first sequel to Ridley Scott's immensely successful Alien ), The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), on which he also served as co-producer. He also served as executive producer on Point Break (1991) and producer and editor on Strange Days (1995).

After stumbling slightly with the critically trashed True Lies (1994), Cameron hit the cinematic jackpot in 1997 with a romantic retelling of the Titanic tragedy, the all-time box-office champion with worldwide receipts in excess of $1.8 billion. The overwhelming success of this surprisingly non-science-fiction and only partly special-effects-dominated project, whose budget had escalated monstrously and for which many industry insiders predicted disaster, undoubtedly confirmed Cameron's belief in his own intuition. Titanic won 11 Oscars (matching a record set by Ben-Hur in 1960), including best picture, and Oscars for Cameron for best director and editor, the first time in the history of the Academy Awards that a Canadian-born director was so honoured.

Following Titanic , Cameron concentrated on underwater cinematography and returned to the sunken hull of the Titanic numerous times in a submersible mounted with an exterior IMAX 3D camera and housing of his own design. The resulting film, Ghosts of the Abyss , was released in 2003. Cameron won a Primetime Emmy Award for the documentary Expedition: Bismarck (2002, which he co-directed). He also co-produced the George Clooney remake of Solaris (2002), and 2 shorts, Volcanoes of the Deep (2003; shot in IMAX 3D) and Aliens of the Deep (2005; which he co-directed). He served as executive producer on the short-lived cyberpunk series Dark Angel (2000), and the Canadian documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus (2006).

Before he started work on Titanic , James Cameron began writing a script based on ideas that had been percolating since his childhood; that script would eventually see the light of day 15 years later as the epic science fiction blockbuster Avatar . This cutting-edge digital motion-capture/live-action 3D movie, shot in IMAX and set in a futuristic fantasy world of Cameron's own creation, used a revolutionary process - the digital 3D Fusion Camera System - that Cameron co-developed specifically for the film. Released around the world in December 2009, Avatar , with a reported production budget of $230 million and a matching amount for promotion, was the most expensive movie ever made.

In 1998, James Cameron was given honorary degrees from Carleton University in Ottawa and Ryerson University in Toronto. In 2004 he received an honorary degree from the University of Southampton, UK, in recognition of his contributions to underwater filming and remote vehicle technology. He was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2008.

A fierce workaholic and obsessive perfectionist involved in all phases of production, James Cameron has pushed the technological boundaries of filmmaking more than any other director since George Lucas and is the undisputed "king" of the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster.

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James Cameron by Bruce Isaacs LAST REVIEWED: 03 May 2023 LAST MODIFIED: 27 June 2018 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0294

James Cameron (b. 1954) is now widely regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers working within the American studio system. While Cameron has directed relatively few films, and certainly significantly fewer than contemporary Hollywood filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis (with whom he is often compared), his meteoric rise within the Hollywood system was due in large part to his pioneering use of film and digital technologies, an innovative approach to narrative and visual film form, and an extraordinary series of box office successes with films such as The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009). Biographical sources describe a young Cameron fascinated with technology and science, and a keen explorer of amateur filmmaking. Like so many of his American film contemporaries, his initial venture into professional production was with Roger Corman’s studio, working on special effects and model making, before deciding to develop his skills as a screenwriter, producer, and director. The Terminator and Aliens demonstrate Cameron’s imaginative flair for visual and aural form, with each work clearly making a significant contribution to the development of mechanical and optical effects production. Both films also fed into an era in the mid-1980s of increasing experimentation with narrative and genre. Terminator 2: Judgment Day represents a paradigmatic shift in the development and use of special effects within the American film industry, essentially mainstreaming digital effects production for the decade to follow. The success of Terminator 2 as a film blockbuster fed into a growing trend among Hollywood studios to integrate cinema into other media technologies; Universal Studios premiered the interactive attraction T2: 3D Battle Across Time in 1996, a staggering intertextual 24-million dollar production in its own right. But it is Cameron’s two most recent blockbusters, Titanic and Avatar , that have attracted the greatest attention from film, media, and cultural studies scholars. Both films represent at their point of production the highest budgeted and highest box-office grossing films of all time. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that Titanic and Avatar define a particular auteuristic vision for the filmmaker, and represent a nexus for discussions of film form, ideology, and politics across his body of work.

There are several biographies on Cameron, some more reliable than others. Keegan 2010 provides a fairly expansive overview of Cameron’s development as a filmmaker, as well as critical information on his early career development, while Parisi 1998 presents a vivid dramatization of the production of Titanic . Robb 2002 , Fischer 2011 , and Keller 2002 offer valuable and significantly condensed accounts of Cameron’s career and engage several of the films thematically, with some level of critical and theoretically oriented assessment; Keller’s chapter is particularly insightful in its reading of thematic and formal aspects of the films. Fitzpatrick 2009 and Duncan and Fitzpatrick 2010 are essential sources of information on Cameron’s production of Avatar .

Duncan, Jody, and Lisa Fitzpatrick. The Making of Avatar. New York: Abrams, 2010.

Comprehensive account of the production of Avatar , now almost mythic in its size, scale, and grandiosity. The volume also boasts a beautifully designed layout in text and images, and provides an essential point of entry into understanding the complex production processes at the highest end of the Hollywood studio system.

Fischer, Dennis. “James Cameron.” In Science Fiction Film Directors, 1895–1998 . By Dennis Fischer, 107–125. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

Contains a useful general overview of Cameron’s early life, film influences, and career development after leaving Corman’s production company. The chapter presents a combination of anecdotes, interview excerpts, and general descriptions of Cameron’s films.

Fitzpatrick, Lisa. The Art of Avatar: James Cameron’s Epic Adventure . New York: Abrams, 2009.

Less a stand-alone volume than a useful companion to Duncan and Fitzpatrick 2010 . The book is especially valuable for its focus on the graphic foundations of many of the digital production processes that would later be overlaid onto the manual artwork.

Keegan, Rebecca. The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron . New York: Three Rivers Press, 2010.

The most authoritative (and certainly most frequently cited) of an ever-growing collection of biographies on Cameron. Keegan is a film and entertainment journalist, and as such there is not a great deal of objectivity in her accounts of Cameron’s achievements. Nonetheless, as the book jacket suggests, Keegan enjoyed extensive access to Cameron, his colleagues and collaborators, and the production set of Avatar .

Keller, Alexandra. “James Cameron.” In Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers . Edited by Yvonne Tasker, 81–90. London; New York: Routledge, 2002.

Tasker’s invaluable reference work on film directors includes a substantial entry on Cameron authored by Alexandra Keller (see also Keller 2006 , cited under Scholarly Books and Anthologies ). Keller reads the cinema of Cameron through the lenses of auteur theory and authorship, genre form and theory, and politics.

Parisi, Paula. Titanic and the Making of James Cameron . London: Orion, 1998.

A thoroughly engaging dramatization of the making of Titanic from an author that had extensive access to production accounts and materials. The book is part reportage and part melodrama. In the vein of Lillian Ross’s landmark Picture (1952), but certainly not as substantial as that work.

Robb, Brian J. The Pocket Essential James Cameron . Harpenden, UK: Pocket Essentials, 2002.

Very useful background and biographical material, bolstered by a rigorous examination of Cameron’s films and their textual and generic properties. While offering a general overview of Cameron as filmmaker, this slim volume is an excellent introduction to scholarship on the filmmaker.

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“GOAT for a reason”: Even Steven Spielberg and James Cameron Find it Difficult to Beat Christopher Nolan’s 1 Career Milestone

F ilmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, and Christopher Nolan are known for pushing the boundaries in blockbuster filmmaking as they bring in original ideas and mount them on a large scale. While the directors have grown to be critical favorites, they also seem to have won the box office race with their original films.

Among these legends, Christopher Nolan seems to have gained the top spot in one category. With four of his original films grossing over $500 million at the box office, Nolan beat Spielberg and Roland Emmerich to gain the top spot. The Oscar-winner is the only filmmaker to have achieved this feat with movies that are not comic adaptations, reboots, or sequels.

Christopher Nolan Beats Steven Spielberg In One Directorial Achievement

Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan have been maverick filmmakers who seem to have cracked the ‘blockbuster with artistic merit’ formula in their own ways. Spielberg has been a fan favorite since his first summer blockbuster Jaws broke onto the scene while Nolan’s cerebral filmography began with his mind-bending Memento .

The filmmakers have grown in scale since their first film and both command large budgets and ensemble star casts only with the power of their name. Nolan’s latest Oscar-winning World War II biopic Oppenheimer got a Summer release, much like a superhero film, and despite facing stiff competition from Barbie , earned over $975 million.

While Steven Spielberg has given his fair share of industry hits with films like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park , Nolan seems to have bested him in one specific feat. With four original films in his filmography, Nolan has the highest number of originals to have crossed the $500 million mark at the box office, according to X user Nolan Analyst .

The director has helmed films such as Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer , all of which have crossed the $500 million mark at the worldwide box office. The criteria for originals reportedly included films that were not reboots, sequels, and comic-book adaptations. Despite being inspired by the biography American Prometheus, Oppenheimer seemed to have been included in the list.

Steven Spielberg And Christopher Nolan Have Appreciated Each Other

Despite being the leaders in a similar arena of filmmaking, Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg have always expressed their admiration for each other. Nolan reportedly showed a 70mm IMAX screener of Oppenheimer for the first time to Spielberg. The Dunkirk filmmaker had only screened the film for producers at the time and described watching Spielberg watch his film as an extraordinary experience.

He reportedly mentioned to Denis Villeneuve in an interview with the Associated Press ,

You know when I first got the 70mm/5perf print, I showed it to Steven Spielberg. He had called me about something else and I had just got the print as well and I hadn’t shown it to anyone. I mean, the studio had seen it. But we screened it for him on his own. I sat behind him and watched him watch the film. It was an extraordinary experience.

Nolan also reportedly sought the Saving Private Ryan filmmaker’s advice while working on Dunkirk. The filmmaker reportedly asked Spielberg to send a print of Saving Private Ryan so he could show his crew the feeling he wanted from the battle scenes in Dunkirk (via Variety ).